SOBEY V. HALL

~ ORIGINAP?? *

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

- _ORIGINAL

| REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

Judgment delivered at... S¥Sney.

W.-M, Houstow, Govt Print, Selb. "4 on..Monday, 30th November.1959...

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SOBEY Ve

HALL

ORDER

Appeal allowed with costs. Order that the order of the Full Court of the Supreme Court be set aside and in lieu thereof order that the appeal and the exoss appeal be dismissed with costs.

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HALL

This appeal from the Full Court of the Supreme Court of South Australia raises once again a question of solving by deduction from circumstances the riddle of how a fatal road accident was brought about. The dead man could have explained it if he had survived and, I suppose, if he had exhibited no amnesia. But there is no other direct testimony which can give the explanation. The dead man was riding a motor cycle with a side car attached. The side car consisted only of a box fixed by bolts to the undercarriage. On the pillion seat behind him was a man whose wife rode in the box with her back to the wind, that is to say to the direction in which they were travelling. The motor cyclist ran into some

part of the rear of a truck moving in the same direction and was killed. The two passengers survived but can say little or nothing that matters. The truck driver can tell us all about the movements of his truck but with one important exception nothing about the motor cycle.

The hour was about 9.30 p.m. on a dark but fine night; the place Junction Road, Finsbury. The date is now four and a half years ago. The truck had emerged from a gate on the left-hand side of the road. It was driven by a earrier's driver and he is the defendant. The gate was that of the migrants' hostel where he had delivered some luggage and other things. It was a wide enough gate, in line with the fencing, which was about fourteen feet from the gutter. From the gutter to the bitumen surface there was another ten feet of dirt surface. The bitumen roadway was twenty-one feet wide. The truck had head lights, a side light or lights and tail light, all on. The truck driver said in his evidence